Today we’d like to introduce you to Audrey Faison.
Hi Audrey, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve been in education since 2014 when I worked at a sports-based youth development program in Baltimore City and then I moved to LA and joined Teach For America in 2016. I have now been teaching in South LA for the past seven years. I’m extremely passionate about the fight for equity and justice in underserved communities and the fact that all kids deserve to have access to equal educational opportunities and life experiences.
In my personal life, I am a skater and a surfer and over the last two years, I’ve been thinking about how I can bring this to the communities that I work with. In 2022 I started a girl skateboarding club called Concrete Queenz at my school, and this year we are successfully operating as a nonprofit. My goal for the future is to continue to bring skating to underserved girls in South LA by expanding to other schools in the community.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. I think being a teacher is one of the most challenging jobs that you can hold-it’s long hours, not enough pay… there are so many variables that influence how your day goes so I want to shout out all my fellow educators!!
In terms of my nonprofit, one of the biggest struggles was just getting the program to start. We went back-and-forth for a long time with our insurance, and the battled the belief that skateboarding would be too dangerous of an activity to have on campus. After we worked through that, I received so much love and support from the skateboarding community from donations, sponsors, people volunteering their time to come and help so even though it was a little bit of a rough start, I’m really proud and happy for our first year programming and I’m excited for the future and to see what we can do together.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
The goal of Concrete Queenz is to bring skateboarding and community to underserved girls in South LA. We are currently operating in Animo Mae Jemison Charter Middle School in Compton. Last year, we had 14 girls in the program and we skated after school every Thursday. At the end of the year, we were able to go on a field trip to Venice Beach. We skated at the skate park, got food donated from Venice Ale House and we got to explore the boardwalk. It was a lot of the girl’s first time being over at the beach so it was a really memorable experience. Over the summer, we were able to send one of our girls to Woodward West for a 7-day sleepover skate camp. She was given instruction from female pro skaters, and just to see that look on her face, and her participating is really what makes me happy and makes me feel like we have a successful program.
This year, we have 25 girls in the program and that’s with saying no to about 20 to 30 girls because we just dont have the capacity right now. We continue to skate on Thursdays and just had an event with pro skaters, food from Fat Sals Deli, and raffle prizes from Mamaskate, Keen Ramps, Cariuma, and Grind Theory, to get the girls excited about the program. This year we’re planning on going on a field trip at the end of the year potentially to skate park in Compton and then next year at the end of the school year we plan to go back to Venice.
Aside from just being a skate program, I think that there are a lot of things that we are offering to the girls in the community. All of the sports programs at my school and at my previous school were really geared toward male students- boys football, boys basketball, and boys soccer… there wasn’t really an opportunity for girls to participate. Now that we have this space, I am excited to see girls be competitive, show their strength, and push back on the stereotypes revolving around girls and athletics.
With skating specifically, there are so many lessons you can learn and things that you can discover within yourself. Making, mistakes, falling, failing, getting back up and showing yourself that you can always push forward. You become constantly inspirired by what you can accomplish and by what those in the skate community are doing. You are provided with the opportunity to consistently improve and learn.
We are responsible for supporting this next generation of skaters, specifically female skaters so we need to have these spaces for them to be able to grow, learn, and feel comfortable. My goal with the program is to be able to resign in my role as a teacher and pursue the nonprofit full-time- expanding to hopefully other schools in my school district or other schools in Compton. Expanding the program would allow for multiple programming days throughout the week at multiple schools, in addition to offering academic programming.
I think what I’m most proud of is just being able to bring something new to the girls, making them feel like they’re part of something and having them gain access to opportunities that they might not have had if it wasn’t for the program.
You can follow us on Instagram @concretequeenz and visit our website www.concretequeenz.org where you can see events that we were planning, photos videos, and a link to our donation page.
Pricing:
- $100 helps us buy a board
- $75 helps us buy helments/pads
- $300 helps us go on field trips
- $5,000 allows us to plan events
- $10,000 helps us pay our program directors and volunteers
Contact Info:
- Website: www.audreyfaison.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/bbfais
- Other: www.concretequeenz.org
Image Credits
Victoria Craven Bobby Rivero Ali Schiebel Kerry Cook
